Four Good Reasons Why You Should No Longer Work from Home

If you own and operate a small business, chances are you work from home. When the bottom line is a concern, working from home is a viable choice with a lot of attractive benefits.

For example, when you work from home, there is no office lease to carry. You don’t have to maintain utility accounts. There’s no commute, no traffic, no parking – and you can get a heck of a lot more done when you don’t have to spend time getting to and from.

However, working from home has a dark side too. The distractions, the temptation to procrastinate, and the lack of privacy are all significant concerns. But when is enough truly enough?

The Remote Working Trend: Boom or Bust?

These days, even big companies are hiring remote workers or allowing their employees to work from home. However, not all of these experiments have proven successful.

According to many remote workers—and the employers who hire them—there are many drawbacks of working from home.

Here are just a few reasons why you should no longer work from home:

1. Lack of community and culture. Even with today’s video conferencing technology, work-life can get pretty lonely when all you’ve got is a screen for the company. When you don’t see your colleagues or if you only see them for a few minutes each week, it’s challenging to develop a team rapport. Workers in the office don’t see remote workers as “real” team members, and remote workers don’t feel like they are part of the team.
2. Unprofessional appearance. When you work from home, you don’t always have complete privacy. Children, spouses, roommates, pets, deliveries – all these things make meetings, phone calls, and video conferences challenging from a professional standpoint. Coffee shops are even worse because people are privy to your conversations, and the background noise makes it impossible to take business calls.
3. No oversight or accountability. Managers of remote workers are often concerned about how to monitor progress and productivity. Of course, if you’re working for yourself, you’re only accountable to you – but how do you stay on track when distractions start threatening your focus? Successful remote workers suggest maintaining a schedule, setting milestones and deadlines, checking in at least weekly, and having face-to-face meetings when possible.
4. Miscommunication. No matter what productivity and collaboration tools you use, whether it’s Slack, Microsoft Office360, SalesForce, Trello, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any combination thereof, working from home takes you out of the action and onto the sidelines. Digital communications don’t allow you to see the non-verbal cues and body language that you can only get in person. As a result, you can waste a lot of time getting hung up on issues that don’t exist or, conversely, missing subtle statements or gestures that add context to an interaction.

In conclusion, working from home might not be the grail of the working class that some would have us think. Making it work can be an effort, but it can be well worth it under the right circumstances. Using meeting rooms or private offices on occasion strengthens the team and puts tasks in perspective.

Are you a digital nomad in search of a home? Fusion Workplaces in Palm Desert offers private offices, coworking space, dedicated desks, and meeting rooms on-demand to satisfy all your remote working needs. Reach out today to learn more or drop by for a tour anytime.